Higher Ed. Policy Leader Calls English Universities ‘Not Very Good at Teaching’

Speaking to a British scientific society about higher education, Bahram Bekradnia (the president of the UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute or HEPI) voiced an inflammatory opinion about his country’s university professors.

“We may be outstanding at research,” said Bakhradnia, “but by all accounts we are not very good at teaching.”

Mr. Bekradnia went on to express the opinion that British professors spent far too much time hitting the books and not nearly enough time imparting their wisdom upon the nation’s students.

He cited a recent Open University survey of 700,000 graduates from 11 European countries which revealed British students to have spent an average of only 30 hours per week in-class, significantly less time than students from nine of the other countries in the survey.

The HEPI president also lamented that British college and university courses were found to be less demanding than those in neighbouring countries, as evidenced by a survey of European international students who experienced laxer studies in the UK than they had in their home countries.

His statements come in the wake of Britain’s new Teaching Excellence Framework announcement, a plan for new government monitoring of quality in England’s Universities.

Mr Bekhradnia said he agrees that Britain needs some kind of new educational framework, but he expressed ambivalence about what his government has in store.